A young couple with matching expressions stare nervously into the camera with deep brown eyes. He, a Vietnamese student, has just met the love of his life. She, a North Korean, is forbidden to love him back.
It was 31 years after Pham Ngoc Canh, 69, took that first photo of Yong Hui, before the two were finally allowed to get married in 2002 when North Korea took the rare step of allowing one of its citizens to marry a foreigner.
"From the moment I saw him, I was so sad because I felt it would be a love that could never be realized," said Ri, 70, speaking from the small Soviet-era apartment she and Canh share in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
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